That’s interesting. You’re pretty much the opposite of me, then. I experience a wide variety of mental images, sounds, etc. I get a lot out of visual images of things, and I imagine written stories as if they are movies in my head. However, if there is a very technical idea that I can’t visualize either directly or indirectly, I usually struggle to understand it. For example, I am very interested in math and science and also have reason to use them on a daily basis (I am a software engineer who has a lot of scientific hobbies). But I almost always try to understand these topics through charts, graphs, geometry, tree structures, and other types of visualizations of the concepts. I posted a little on the topic how my thought processes work in this article, if you’re curious.
I’m curious about how you process information internally. What methods do you find most effective for learning new material? And for recreation, what is your experience of reading a novel vs seeing a movie? Also, feel free to use those questions on your survey if you’re also interested in other people’s answers to them (I realize the first one is related to a question you ask on your survey, although asking about it from a slightly different angle.
Hi Christina, I learn by memorizing words about things: verbal descriptions, procedures, narratives. There are a lot of things that I don’t try to learn because my mind can’t accommodate them effectively in words, e.g. abstract subjects like biochemistry and physics. There are a lot of things that I have to relearn from scratch again and again, such as medicinal properties of herbs, or the names and locations and characteristics of acupressure points. If a procedure is very complicated or hard to describe in words (too many words to memorize), I just don’t have a way to learn it. I am much more effective at learning hands-on things than learning about things that I can’t see (which is why I am a massage therapist and not a physicist!)
There is some motor memory, but only when I have performed an action often enough for it to become automatic, e.g. riding a bike. As a massage therapist, I studied Esalen massage, where the therapist is not working in a premeditated way—there is no sequence of moves like Swedish massage, rather exploring and listening and responding to the body in a fairly ad hoc way. There is one Esalen massage procedure that I would love to do but could never learn, because it involves a specific sequence of several very exact moves, to flip the body from a prone to supine position without the client falling off the massage table :-) I was never in a position to write down all the moves while observing it in class, so I could never practice it or duplicate it on my own.
Reading a novel or watching a movie is a lot like other things in my life: I am only engaging in the current moment of it mentally, the preceding parts are gone, because there is no way to hold on to them mentally. In order to watch a movie or read a novel, I make the effort the keep a running memorization going of a few key plot points in order to process the story. As soon as the movie is over or I’ve put the book down, it’s basically gone from my consciousness, unless I try to think about it or talk about it, and then I only have access to those points that I memorized in order to keep up with the plot, which is a very bare-bones summary.
I often have this sort of experience: I remember that I last night I read maybe a hundred pages of a book that I was enjoying a lot, so I want to finish the book tonight. Hmmm, I wonder, before I walk into the bedroom to retrieve the book, I wonder what I was reading? It was a story about… about… rats, I have no idea what it was, I’ll just have to go see!
While watching a movie, I have a hard time keeping characters straight unless they are actors that I recognize. I can remember—the blonde woman is the husband’s sister… then in the next scene, if there is a blonde woman, I think: she’s blonde, is she the sister or she someone else who is blonde? So I have to memorize words describing enough distinct visual characteristics in order to know for sure who’s who. It gets to be tedious sometimes, until enough of the movie has gone by that some recognition may kick in. There have been some movies that I’ve watched where there are, say, three main characters that are women, and they are all blond, thin, pretty. I can’t find any words to distinguish them, so for the entire movie, I have no idea who’s who. (unless there are some consistent, distinctive behavioral characteristics, like the pretty thin blonde who is angry and sarcastic. but then, through the magic of character growth, if she becomes nice, I don’t know who she is!)
I was shocked to learn several years ago that other people have visuals while reading. A friend asked me, “How can you read literature?” and it made me sad, because I love literature and never realized that there could be a whole extra dimension to it. I don’t actually know what imagination is like, so I can’t imagine what one might imagine while reading a novel! For me it’s just words and plot points.
Hi, Linda.
That’s interesting. You’re pretty much the opposite of me, then. I experience a wide variety of mental images, sounds, etc. I get a lot out of visual images of things, and I imagine written stories as if they are movies in my head. However, if there is a very technical idea that I can’t visualize either directly or indirectly, I usually struggle to understand it. For example, I am very interested in math and science and also have reason to use them on a daily basis (I am a software engineer who has a lot of scientific hobbies). But I almost always try to understand these topics through charts, graphs, geometry, tree structures, and other types of visualizations of the concepts. I posted a little on the topic how my thought processes work in this article, if you’re curious.
I’m curious about how you process information internally. What methods do you find most effective for learning new material? And for recreation, what is your experience of reading a novel vs seeing a movie? Also, feel free to use those questions on your survey if you’re also interested in other people’s answers to them (I realize the first one is related to a question you ask on your survey, although asking about it from a slightly different angle.
Hi Christina, I learn by memorizing words about things: verbal descriptions, procedures, narratives. There are a lot of things that I don’t try to learn because my mind can’t accommodate them effectively in words, e.g. abstract subjects like biochemistry and physics. There are a lot of things that I have to relearn from scratch again and again, such as medicinal properties of herbs, or the names and locations and characteristics of acupressure points. If a procedure is very complicated or hard to describe in words (too many words to memorize), I just don’t have a way to learn it. I am much more effective at learning hands-on things than learning about things that I can’t see (which is why I am a massage therapist and not a physicist!)
There is some motor memory, but only when I have performed an action often enough for it to become automatic, e.g. riding a bike. As a massage therapist, I studied Esalen massage, where the therapist is not working in a premeditated way—there is no sequence of moves like Swedish massage, rather exploring and listening and responding to the body in a fairly ad hoc way. There is one Esalen massage procedure that I would love to do but could never learn, because it involves a specific sequence of several very exact moves, to flip the body from a prone to supine position without the client falling off the massage table :-) I was never in a position to write down all the moves while observing it in class, so I could never practice it or duplicate it on my own.
Reading a novel or watching a movie is a lot like other things in my life: I am only engaging in the current moment of it mentally, the preceding parts are gone, because there is no way to hold on to them mentally. In order to watch a movie or read a novel, I make the effort the keep a running memorization going of a few key plot points in order to process the story. As soon as the movie is over or I’ve put the book down, it’s basically gone from my consciousness, unless I try to think about it or talk about it, and then I only have access to those points that I memorized in order to keep up with the plot, which is a very bare-bones summary.
I often have this sort of experience: I remember that I last night I read maybe a hundred pages of a book that I was enjoying a lot, so I want to finish the book tonight. Hmmm, I wonder, before I walk into the bedroom to retrieve the book, I wonder what I was reading? It was a story about… about… rats, I have no idea what it was, I’ll just have to go see!
While watching a movie, I have a hard time keeping characters straight unless they are actors that I recognize. I can remember—the blonde woman is the husband’s sister… then in the next scene, if there is a blonde woman, I think: she’s blonde, is she the sister or she someone else who is blonde? So I have to memorize words describing enough distinct visual characteristics in order to know for sure who’s who. It gets to be tedious sometimes, until enough of the movie has gone by that some recognition may kick in. There have been some movies that I’ve watched where there are, say, three main characters that are women, and they are all blond, thin, pretty. I can’t find any words to distinguish them, so for the entire movie, I have no idea who’s who. (unless there are some consistent, distinctive behavioral characteristics, like the pretty thin blonde who is angry and sarcastic. but then, through the magic of character growth, if she becomes nice, I don’t know who she is!)
I was shocked to learn several years ago that other people have visuals while reading. A friend asked me, “How can you read literature?” and it made me sad, because I love literature and never realized that there could be a whole extra dimension to it. I don’t actually know what imagination is like, so I can’t imagine what one might imagine while reading a novel! For me it’s just words and plot points.
Thanks for your detailed response! And upvoted since it gave me a lot to think about in regards to variations on how the mind works.